by Ian Wedde
She put her bags in the trunk of the red Mercedes and got into the back seat next to some boxes of brochures for Turkish leather shoes. The brochures smelled new, as did the paint on the car. She had gone most of a night without sleep but now felt if anything less weary than before, all her alert attention gathered as if checking the pulse of this critical moment.
She had left the door from the downstairs kitchen to the garage open, so that the food writer might at least be able to see that he could leave the house when he chose to. There was a small door in the side of the truck garage which led out to a concrete-paved courtyard with some plastic chairs and a rusty iron table, where the drivers and mechanics had left their cigarette butts and some tea-leaves thrown in arcs across the concrete. This small door he could unlock and open from the inside. The orderliness of her thoughts did not lessen the unexpected and, she thought, inappropriate ache of grief which was also an apprehension. When would Christopher wake up? Or what would wake him?
Neither Philippe nor Mahfouz spoke to her from the front seat, nor did either of them turn to look at her. She sensed that Philippe had instructed Mahfouz in this behavior. The driver backed the car out of the garage carefully and without his usual flourishes, and got out to lower the steel roller door and secure it with a padlock.
Even without Mahfouz in the car, Philippe did not speak to her. He sat upright in the front passenger seat and gazed ahead as if there was something to look at. Perhaps he was looking at his thoughts. Unlike Mahfouz he had washed and shaved, and his grey hair was combed flat and moist above his ears. He had a faint aroma of Bay Rum, old fashioned – she knew it from her father when he came back into the house shining from his shave and barbering, with the newspaper in his hand.
To the last moment before the roller door closed she thought she might see the food writer appear hastily from the kitchen at the back of the garage. She could imagine him waving in a clumsy way, uncertain of what he was trying to communicate. But he did not appear, did not wave. As the car turned down the dark street away from the truck drivers’ house, Philippe snapped his fingers once, in the air beside his left ear.
‘Khalas.’ Finished.
No, Philippe, she thought. It is not. For her, perhaps, something was only now beginning. And for the food writer, when he woke up from the innocence of his sleep, there would remain the question, I can go now?
With the headlights of the Mercedes now on they drove circumspectly by the lowest coast road through Cap-d’Ail to Monaco, because there was less surveillance than on La Provençale with the toll-booths. Still no one in the car spoke as they drove on the slow road through Villefranche, Beaulieu and Èze. These were innocent places whose season of entertainment and revenue was still some months distant, so the traffic of supply vehicles and of police was minimal. The red Mercedes of the importer of Turkish shoes and cheap kitchenware drove carefully along the coast which was beginning to lighten with dawn, towards the establishments of the many clients who would wish to restore their inventories during the quiet season. This was a sober, normal business venture and they had made a good, early start.
It was that time of day when the horizon was lost at the place where the sea and the sky meet, an effect increased by the season, whose pale grey mists might have been either water or air, you could not tell the difference; and so the first pink light of dawn came without any strong sense that this was a new day beginning.
At the approach to Monaco, the traffic slowed to accommodate those descending from La Provençale, though there were not many. Even so, the passage through Monaco was congested, but Mahfouz remained patient and refrained from his usual tirades about shit as they drove slowly by the marina with its off-season rows of white, uninhabited yachts. Here, Philippe made a gesture towards the parking lot.
‘Huna.’
There was a large container for rubbish and she put the bag with the grey wig and the surgical gloves into it. Philippe was smoking at the edge of the water, walking slowly up and down, an elegant old man stretching his legs, taking an interest in the luxurious boats. He was wearing a plain grey tweed Italian jacket with a dark pashmina scarf. A prosperous merchant with his driver, and an assistant or business partner perhaps – the tall dark woman, who seemed even a little bored and haughty, displeased at having made such an early start. Perhaps one day this businessman would like to have such a fine boat as one of these – but meanwhile there was work to be done, and a journey, clearly.
At that moment she had the sensation of stepping across an invisible threshold into an alternative world, the one that Philippe had already imagined as it would be seen by those passing casually, barely noticing and not remembering the red Mercedes and its passengers, who would in any case not interest them. Or if they did remember anything, it would be that the Mercedes was red, not a white taxi. Such arrangements were what Philippe did. She had observed this; he was like an artist or a film director in this capacity. He saw what others would see.
And soon she would take her key from the concierge at the apartment building in Geneva – yes, it was good to be back, thank you – and she would be in yet another world whose connection to the double shooting in Le Lapin Sauvage would be even more improbable.
Now, at last, was she beginning to be tired? These were not after all contesting realities, but all aspects of the single one. Even so, she had to make an effort to be where she was, in that moment. She could see that Philippe was looking closely at the surroundings. When he turned from the yachts and looked at her, she experienced the slight nod of his head like a shock, like the instant, early most mornings, when her cellphone alarm made the urgent, insistent sound of a song thrush, four notes the same, and she was awake.
There were oily streaks on the thick, dark, slowly heaving surface of the harbour below the edge of the marina, and when she dropped the revolver, an iridescent eddy dissipated quickly from the place where it had sunk.
In the car again, one word from Philippe, ‘Yallah.’ Go.
And then Mahfouz began to sing – glancing sideways at Philippe as if for permission, drumming on the steering wheel – softly at first, and then, when no one told him to be quiet, with enjoyment and relief, because now at last they were about to be finished with this work.
Yallah yallah yallah!
‘Habibi Ya Eini – yallah ya Bassem, you know it, Maya Yazbeck sang it, when I go to heaven I will fuck her.’
‘My friend, everybody knows this song, and when they get to heaven every man will be ahead of you.’ Philippe patted the driver on his shoulder. ‘But good luck, my friend.’ To her, in the back seat, ‘With respect, excuse us, Professor.’
Of course, Mahfouz was ignorant of the false identity she had now discarded.
Both men were singing and clapping as the red Mercedes ascended through the narrow streets of Monte Carlo towards Cap Martin, Yallah yallah yallah. Habibi ya eini. Ya eini ya leili. Yam sahar eini. Bein hari wi leili!
Love, oh my eyes
Oh my eyes, my nights
My eyes that can’t sleep
By day or by night!
It was natural that they would feel this way, and she could also see that Philippe, with his usual skill, was indulging Mahfouz, because if the driver was happy he would pay less attention to what it was they had left behind them in the truck drivers’ house. He would not dwell on the question of the food writer, assuming that the chef de mission and his clever Doctor would have taken care of that situation.
They came over Cap Martin above the large grey bay of Carnolès and Menton, and there was Italy at the far side of the bay, with the sombre sunrise lighting the rough cliffs and hills that rose inland, and the windows of houses and apartment buildings reflecting back the tints of morning. Then the men in the front seat stopped singing the Maya Yazbeck song, after how many times, perhaps because now they could see between the top of the cape and the distant, misty end of the bay the penultimate stage of their journey towards the conclusion of this game – away from ‘the
one left behind’, she thought, imagining the road between Nice and Genoa as the track of a backgammon board, along which they were moving according to Philippe’s strategy, and according to his compliance with the strategy of his former leader, al-Hakim, her own father’s cousin, that George Habash, who had so often advocated ‘the one left behind’ as effective tric trac.
But also according to his compliance with her interpretation of that strategy.
With the border in front of them and the day beginning to produce the early walkers of little dogs on the Carnolès promenade, they were approaching the moment when ‘the one left behind’ would need to act. There was no longer any surveillance of consequence on the border but they took the uphill route through Garavan and left the territory of the French police past the tax-free liquor store on the Italian side, where some early customers were already drinking coffee and smoking on the little terrace by the shop, waiting for it to open. And then they crossed the hill and descended on the Italian side towards Ventimiglia.
Then, for the first time, Philippe permitted himself a few words. He remained gazing ahead with a calm upright posture, so that she had to lean forward to hear what he was saying in his factual, engineer’s voice. In doing so she leaned into the scent of his Bay Rum and cigarette, her father’s morning aroma. She would always regret her father’s disapproval of her even as she treasured his pride in her professional accomplishments. Inside him, she knew, he had carried a shame ever since leaving Lydda, and the question, What if we had stayed?
‘My friends,’ said Philippe formally as if addressing colleagues for whom he had no particular feelings, ‘now we are for the moment beyond the immediate surveillance of the French, though who knows whether there are others with a more urgent motivation.’
What if they had stayed? Her father’s question sat to the side of her mind as she attended to what Philippe was saying. Mahfouz had again become tense, and began to interrupt Philippe, who stopped him with a hand on his arm.
‘Yes, we are perhaps just out of sight of whoever may be looking for the woman who committed two murders last night and the driver of the white taxi that took her away. And we may be wondering about the complication that arose. But I want to say to you: mabrouk, my friends, we accomplished what we set out to do and now each of us knows what to do next. So that is the main thing.’
If her father’s family had not fled in the weeks before al-Nakba, would the white-stone house still be there, in Lydda? Would they, rather, have joined that procession of people walking towards Barfiliya – the pale, hot image that was as real in her mind as if she had been there? Would her grandmother have survived that walk? Her mother, pregnant with her brother? How often she had rebuked herself for these stupid questions, for which there were no answers, because the only circumstance in which it was possible to live was the present one – and yet she knew that in some way they expressed her father’s shame, which she had tried to redeem through her own actions, through her disobedience and subsequently her stupid risks, of which he had disapproved. Especially her going to Beirut with Boutros, to the apartment of that mad dog, her husband, which was certainly the cause of his grandson’s death.
‘And as for that complication,’ Philippe continued, turning then just a little to look at Mahfouz whose neck had become tight with worry, ‘our colleague the Doctor has taken care of that. So we will not speak about it again. Not among ourselves.’ His hand on the driver’s arm again. ‘And not to any other person.’
Which was when her father had begun to go unshaven for days at a time, taking his coffee in pyjamas on the rooftop, leaving the newspaper unopened on the large table downstairs, smelling like an old man and not of Bay Rum and his daily ration of one Turkish cigarette.
‘And now,’ said Philippe as they crossed the river to Ventimiglia, ‘let us have a coffee together, since the Italians at least know how to do it.’
This was his joke, to break the moment of tension over the ‘complication’. He gave the driver’s arm a squeeze to be friendly but also to mark his instruction to remain silent.
That was where he died, her father, without warning, in his pyjamas, his coffee spilled across the little table at his side – on the roof of his house on Jebel Ashrafieh, in the very place her grandmother had once occupied with her rehearsed performances, facing west, towards what he had left behind over there, the Mar Jirjes to protect the house of his marriage, his necessity, his decision, his shame.
They had coffee and some slices of onion focaccia in weak, chilly sunshine outside a café by the market. The place was busy and loud with early shoppers and with porters and vendors. None of them had eaten substantially the night before, but it was Mahfouz who was hungriest – he ordered another portion and also a slice of frittata. The energy with which he ate and the effort it was costing him to remain silent about the food writer were equally apparent in his nervous gestures, his eyes sometimes downcast and at others flicking about, avoiding hers. He had the guilty expression of someone embarrassed by his hunger and his manners, and at the same time defiant in his sense of entitlement.
Philippe was watching him carefully, she saw; he was watching where this fissure in Mahfouz might open and release something they would all regret. And at a certain moment, turning as if to wipe his mouth on a paper napkin, the old man looked at her directly, and when he had her attention, gestured quickly with his eyebrows at the driver.
‘Mi piace l’italiano,’ he said softly, meaning, speak Italian. He gestured at the plate from which Mahfouz had just taken the last of his frittata. ‘The food, the coffee, it’s better.’ His chin lifted the conversation in her direction.
‘I, too, prefer Italian food,’ she said, hearing a kind of falseness in her voice. ‘And you, Mahfouz?’
He was looking at her suspiciously, in case she was making fun of his appetite. ‘I prefer Italian whores,’ he said, in the French-sounding accent of Genoa.
‘The food writer likewise,’ she persisted, accepting the driver’s coarse joke. ‘Though as to the whores, he didn’t tell me.’ Then she built a short bridge for herself. ‘But I learned something about his wife.’
She saw the driver’s attention focus quickly – he put the remnant of his frittata down and waited, chewing slowly.
‘The last message he wished to leave for his wife was, food is love.’
Then Mahfouz was calculating the parts of what she had just said. His eyes on her while he put the last piece of food in his mouth and chewed it.
This was a cunning and resourceful man who concealed his knowledge of the world behind his vocabulary of shit and whores. But she knew he had survived as a teenage guerrilla without mother or father in the camp at Bourj el-Barajneh under the Israeli air strikes, and when the fedayeen left Beirut in August of 1982 he had gone with them on the boats with a piece of shrapnel still in his back, first to Algiers and then by stages to Genoa, where he learned to fix and on occasion to steal the cars he then drove to the ferry at Malaga and to the operators of taxis in Morocco. She knew of the deep cavity under his right shoulder-blade where shrapnel had been removed, because she had looked at it when she saw he still felt pain these many years later, and she knew his deafness in one ear was one reason why his manner was sometimes aggressive or defiant.
But also, he had been where she had not. He had been born in west Beirut in the camp, he had been orphaned, he had fought, he had been wounded, he had endured the days of air strikes. And when he looked steadily at her with his eyes that were capable of seeing her dissemble, she also saw a certain careful scorn in his expression, because although he respected her work as a doctor for children, not to mention what she had shown she was capable of in the restaurant the night before, he also knew that she had not been born and brought up in a place like Bourj el-Barajneh and had not hidden underground waiting for the roof to collapse on her under the weight of the bombardment. And then there was the matter of the food writer, which he was forbidden to discuss, but which she could see he did
not respect her for.
So when she said ‘the last message’, he was not permitted to interrogate her about the complete meaning of what she had said, but was expected to draw his own conclusion. She watched him thinking about it, knowing she was at least his equal in the challenge of her expression. And also because, in her heart, and in the grief that lingered in the pit of her stomach, she believed the matter had indeed been taken care of.
‘Food is love.’ Mahfouz spoke the phrase warily, as if searching for its code. ‘This was the last thing he said?’
‘It was his farewell message for his wife.’ She held the convenient truth of this in her expression as Mahfouz looked at her, still with a certain disbelief. ‘What do you make of that?’ she asked him, leading his thoughts away from the question at the heart of his doubt.
And then, at last, he seemed to relax a little. He pushed his finger through the oil on his plate and sucked it. His eyes drifted to the young woman cutting focaccia slices on the marble bench at the front of the café.
Then he spoke quietly in Arabic, his voice reaching back into his throat for the sound and shape of the poetry.
If I am hungry
I will eat the flesh of my usurper.
Beware of my hunger
And of my anger.
She knew it, a poem of Mahmoud Darwish, ‘Identity Card’. It was a poem that was always quoted, the children of the camps still learned it, forty years after it was written. When the woman cutting focaccia saw that Mahfouz was looking at her, she put a fist on her hip, challenging him, and he looked away, embarrassed.
‘Let’s go,’ he said, returning to his Genoese Italian. But then, quietly, he added more lines from ‘Identity Card’.
